George Martin: musicians pay tribute to the genius behind the Beatles

The Beatles studio guru invented the concept of the modern producer. Ten of his successors reveal the lessons he taught them.

Mark Ronson Amy Winehouse, Adele, Paul McCartney “It’s impossible to go into a studio and not have traces of what the Beatles did with George Martin. The very idea of taking a three-minute pop song and having the urge to put something more sophisticated on it – a string arrangement or a harpsichord or a choir – he brought that to pop music. I was in a studio last night with a bass in my hand, thinking, ‘What would George do?’ Every day you go in a studio, what he did with the Beatles is hanging over you as a barometer of trying to make a good song an extraordinary one.

“He made music more sophisticated, although there is a grittiness to those recordings; it’s not all clean and perfect. He always knew what a recording needed – he introduced backwards tape loops; he was an amazing arranger and he knew how to deal with fragile egos. He could coax the best out of these audio novices who became the most prolific and gifted songwriters of all time. It’s impossible to overstate what he did in terms of trying to make something interesting or eccentric or weird.

“Listen to Tame Impala, whoever – we’re all in debt to that guy. People asked, when I worked with Paul McCartney on his last album, ‘Are you nervous?’ You’re not only nervous because you’re working with Sir Paul McCartney, one of the greatest songwriters ever – there’s also the ghost of Sir George.”

By: Paul Lester

Source: The Guardian

Read More >>